River Sing Me Home

On the Providence plantation in Barbados, the master gathers his slaves to announce that the 1834 Emancipation Act has freed them, then adds that they remain bound to him as unpaid apprentices. Rachel refuses the lie and flees that night. What follows is a journey across the Caribbean, from Barbados to British Guiana to Trinidad, as she searches for the five surviving children who were sold away from her during her enslavement: Mary Grace, Micah, Thomas Augustus, Cherry Jane, and Mercy. Facing danger, exhaustion, and answers that may break her, Rachel is driven by the certainty that a mother cannot be free until she knows what became of her children. The novel traces the many ways the enslaved resisted and endured on the far edge of freedom.